I am 99% opposed to the death penalty for all of the reasons given above.
That being said, if it is to be carried out then a decision needs to be made:
1)The purpose is to put down a rabid dog that poses a real and persistent threat to society at large.
2)The purpose is retribution/revenge and a demonstration of the state’s power.
If it is #1 then re-introduce the gas chamber and fill it with nitrogen. Keep (make?) it cheap, humane, quick and efficient.
If it is #2 then make it public, painful, messy and cheap.
I believe that until a conclusion is reached as to what the purpose of capitol punishment truly is then no meaningful or lasting progress will be made on the issue itself.
In fairness, I don’t see anyone in this thread holding up this guy as any kind of martyr. Everything I’ve read about him strongly indicates that he was an evil piece of shit. But I don’t care about him. I care about the next person in that chamber whose conviction may very well be less secure.
Speaking only for myself, this whole issue ultimately boils down to the incontrovertible universal truth that what can go wrong will go wrong. It doesn’t matter how sophisticated our forensic techniques become, or how many appeals we give the convicted, sooner or later we will execute an innocent person by mistake. It’s not a risk, it’s a mathematical certainty.
Frankly, if you’re okay with that, if you’re willing to blithely turn a blind eye to the cold and clinical execution of a completely innocent human being purely in pursuit of your personal utilitarian idea of a greater good, then there really isn’t a huge difference between you and the people you want to see dead.
As I’ve said before, it is sick in a peculiar and twisted way to maintain that executions must be absolutely pain- fear- and stress-free. I’ve never heard of a case where a murder was so perfectly executed as to cause the victim no pain, fear, or suffering.
Even a nurse giving you a life-saving vaccination knows enough to say, “You’re going to feel a little pinch here.”
Go out of our way to torture murderers? No way. Bend over in a 720° rotation trying to keep them from even being a little depressed about their last walk? Fuck that.
“This is going to hurt. Sorry, really. It won’t hurt long.”
Well I should clarify that I don’t mean people will be worshipping him like a martyr, but that his death can never be separated from his actions while alive, so focusing on how he died will always lead one to wonder what he did to deserve it, and its at that point that sympathy for a more humane method drops.
It’s worth noting that the sentence is death, not painful death. The Shylock defence could be considered to apply. Maybe.
I don’t know of anyone saying executions should be fear- or stress-free. If they did, I wouldn’t say it came close to the sick-and-twisted behaviour that it is calling for the death of anyone. I’m 100% with Gandalf on this.
Thing is, though, DP opponents say the barbarity is mainly to ourselves. That intentionally killing someone makes us no better than they are.
That argument, combined with the capricious and highly unreliable nature of the process, as the Illinois study a few years back showed, is what changed my mind.
By that same logic, when a kidnapper abducts someone and holds them captive for years - and the state responds by locking up the kidnapper in prison for years - how does that make the state any better than the kidnapper?
There is a *range *of reasons we use imprisonment; can you think of some? Besides simple punishment and rehabilitation, they include protecting ourselves from people who have demonstrated a proclivity to do what they have done.
Now which of those, or others you can name, aligns with the motives for kidnapping?
There is a lot of overlap between the motivations for imprisonment and execution. If your needs can be served by imprisonment, you have to look at what your other motivations for execution are.
There are even cases of innocents being convicted after confessions that turn out to be false. (Central Park jogger case)
I don’t like being part of a society that executes people. I’m sure most of those executed deserved what they got (and worse), but I don’t deserve to be part of that. It’s me I’m concerned with, not the guilty.
Cheap isn’t the point. We don’t just shoot people because that looks too much like killing; we want our killing to look all neat and clean and clinical.
Never happen. The death penalty is, always has been and always will be implemented in a corrupt, incompetent and bigoted fashion. That’s what it’s for. It’s about legal/political theater, not justice, retribution or protecting the public.
None of which has anything to do with the death penalty. We put people on death row because they are targets who can be easily railroaded, not because they are guilty of especially awful crimes or guilty of anything at all. It has nothing to do with justice either. Putting people on death row isn’t even about executing them; it’s about prosecutors and politicians looking “tough on crime”. They don’t care if the target is ever executed any more than they care if the target is actually guilty or not.
It kills innocent people, enables bigotry and apparently encourages crime especially murder.
And?
To a degree, yes. The death penalty on the other hand has always tended to increase crime if it has any effect at all. States that execute people have higher murder rates.